Manolete Ortiz

Manolete Ortiz (23 December 1769-1811) was a colonel of the Spanish Army during the Peninsular War. Leading a rebellion in Navarra, he was killed after a failed ambush on the French.

Biography
Ortiz was born in Navarra in northern Spain, and joined the army in 1779 at the age of ten. He was sent to Gibraltar to take part in the Great Siege of Gibraltar during the American Revolutionary War, and reached the rank of Sergeant in 1785. During the French Revolutionary Wars he was the patron of a regiment of Husares in the Spanish Army, and he fought against the French in the War of the Pyrenees with some distinguishment. He became a Colonel in the Spanish Army, but was dismissed in 1808 by Bonapartist Spain after they took over the country.

In 1811, a retired Ortiz left his farm and took command of his own band of cavalry and two regiments of Fusiliers, launching a rebellion against France's rule over the Iberian Peninsula. His army fought the French in the Battle of Navarra in early May 1811, but Charlot Pierpont defeated him and most of his men were killed. Ortiz fled to the woods, where he gathered a small band of men; he was killed later in the year in a failed ambush on the French Army.